Google and Salesforce

With Salesforce for Google Apps, you can now run your favorite desktop applications and your Salesforce applications side by side by accessing Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Talk, and Google Docs all seamlessly from within Salesforce.

Erick at TechCrunch has more details. To quote Erick, “Google is in effect becoming Salesforce’s productivity suite.” To quote him quoting Salesforce founder and CEO Marc Benioff:

Certainly the enemy of my enemy is my friend, which makes Google my best friend. I have spoken with a lot of customers who want to get off of Microsoft Word.

It looks to me as though this alliance makes more sense than would an acquisition. I admit that I’m looking from a literal distance of several thousand miles, and that I don’t have any insider knowledge. But acquisitions can be expensive, in terms of time, attention, and morale as much as money. Just ask Microsoft and Yahoo.